Photo courtesy of Jude Parkinson-Morgan.
Award Winning Californians
Bravo to all the APLD California members who recently received awards at the 2018 APLD International Landscape Conference in Toronto. All the winners and their gardens can be seen below, and in the latest issue of The Designer.
DESIGNER PROFILE: Steve Harbour, APLD
Interviewed by David Clarke, APLD
Steve Harbour, APLD
Steve Harbour Landscapes, Alpine, CA
APLD San Diego District Member
Tell us a little about yourself. (i.e., town you grew up in, early experiences, education, hobbies, etc.)
I am a Southern California native, born and raised in Fullerton, CA. When I was ten, an older neighbor bequeathed me his yard maintenance business, which I begrudgingly accepted. The six yards I inherited, including my own home, became the feeble beginnings of my experience in landscaping. Later on, I moved to Sonoma County to attend Sonoma State University (B.A. English). I found a summer job at a local Sebastopol wholesale nursery, then got hired to work after school at a retail nursery in Petaluma. Right after graduation, I got married and we moved to San Diego. I had wanted to pursue a career in journalism, but finding no work above minimum wage, I discovered San Diego’s vast network of wholesale and retail nurseries, and continued on in horticulture. That was 36 years ago.
How did you find a career in landscape design?
I had a great early career working in horticulture, yet felt the need to do something more creative. I had been working alongside several landscape architects while working in wholesale, recommending and locating specimen trees and hard-to-find plants for their jobs, and found myself more and more enamored with the thought of landscape design. So I enrolled at Cuyamaca College at night to study landscape design, then got my first job as a landscape designer and consultant, with Anderson’s La Costa Nursery in 1997.
Where Science Meets Art: Ecological Landscape Design
by Shawn Maestretti
Shawn Maestretti Garden Architecture, PC, Altadena, CA
APLD Greater Los Angeles Area District Member
I’ve been thinking a lot about carbon recently. Along with oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen, it is one of the essential building blocks of life. Through my journey of discovery, I have come to understand that we exist because of these elements, and that we are the same as the living creatures around us. Realizing that plants are made up of the same carbon atoms in our atmosphere was a life changing epiphany for me.
Why is that important? Our atmosphere is overloaded with more carbon than the current photosynthesizing life on earth can handle. Our climate is warming up too rapidly and our oceans are acidifying, killing off oxygen-giving phytoplankton. Currently, 1/3 of arable land is experiencing desertification and it is getting worse.